September 20, 2012

Obama Nominates Three for Judgeships, Including Two in D.C.

President Barack Obama nominated three people today to fill two judgeships in Washington and one in New York.

Ketanji Brown Jackson was nominated to become a judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. She has been vice chair and commissioner of the U.S. Sentencing Commission since 2010, and has previously worked at Morrison & Foerster from 2007 to 2010 and as an assistant federal public defender in the district from 2005 to 2007.

Nelson Román was nominated to become a judge in the Southern District of New York. Román, an associate justice of the First Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court since 2009, has also been a judge inBronx County for six years and a judge on the New York City Civil Court for a year.

Robert Okun was nominated to become a judge in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Okun is currently chief of the special proceedings division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, and also has served as Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney for Operations.

Okun previously was a trial attorney in the Department of Justice’s Office of Consumer Litigation and in the Fraud Section of the Civil Division, as well as in the Office of Policy and Evaluation at the Federal Trade Commission.

Okun was one of 17 local attorneys and judges who applied for the vacancy, which was announced in April.